Book III
2. The Constituent Principle in the Various Forms of Government

TO set forth the general cause of the above differences, we must here
distinguish between government and its principle, as we did before
between the State and the Sovereign.

The body of the magistrate may be composed of a greater or a less number
of members. We said that the relation of the Sovereign to the subjects
was greater in proportion as the people was more numerous, and, by a
clear analogy, we may say the same of the relation of the government to
the magistrates.

But the total force of the government, being always that of the State,
is invariable; so that, the more of this force it expends on its own
members, the less it has left to employ on the whole people.

The more numerous the magistrates, therefore, the weaker the government.
This principle being fundamental, we must do our best to make it clear.

In the person of the magistrate we can distinguish three essentially
different wills: first, the private will of the individual, tending only
to his personal advantage; secondly, the common will of the magistrates,
which is relative solely to the advantage of the prince, and may be
called corporate will, being general in relation to the government, and
particular in relation to the State, of which the government forms part;
and, in the third place, the will of the people or the sovereign will,
which is general both in relation to the State regarded as the whole,
and to the government regarded as a part of the whole.

In a perfect act of legislation, the individual or particular will
should be at zero; the corporate will belonging to the government should
occupy a very subordinate position; and, consequently, the general or
sovereign will should always predominate and should be the sole guide of
all the rest.

According to the natural order, on the other hand, these different wills
become more active in proportion as they are concentrated. Thus, the
general will is always the weakest, the corporate will second, and the
individual will strongest of all: so that, in the government, each
member is first of all himself, then a magistrate, and then a citizen --
in an order exactly the reverse of what the social system requires.

This granted, if the whole government is in the hands of one man, the
particular and the corporate will are wholly united, and consequently
the latter is at its highest possible degree of intensity. But, as the
use to which the force is put depends on the degree reached by the will,
and as the absolute force of the government is invariable, it follows
that the most active government is that of one man.

Suppose, on the other hand, we unite the government with the legislative
authority, and make the Sovereign prince also, and all the citizens so
many magistrates: then the corporate will, being confounded with the
general will, can possess no greater activity than that will, and must
leave the particular will as strong as it can possibly be. Thus, the
government, having always the same absolute force, will be at the lowest
point of its relative force or activity.

These relations are incontestable, and there are other considerations
which still further confirm them. We can see, for instance, that each
magistrate is more active in the body to which he belongs than each
citizen in that to which he belongs, and that consequently the
particular will has much more influence on the acts of the government
than on those of the Sovereign; for each magistrate is almost always
charged with some governmental function, while each citizen, taken
singly, exercises no function of Sovereignty. Furthermore, the bigger
the State grows, the more its real force increases, though not in direct
proportion to its growth; but, the State remaining the same, the number
of magistrates may increase to any extent, without the government
gaining any greater real force; for its force is that of the State, the
dimension of which remains equal. Thus the relative force or activity of
the government decreases, while its absolute or real force cannot
increase.

Moreover, it is a certainty that promptitude in execution diminishes as
more people are put in charge of it: where prudence is made too much of,
not enough is made of fortune; opportunity is let slip, and deliberation
results in the loss of its object.

I have just proved that the government grows remiss in proportion as the
number of the magistrates increases; and I previously proved that, the
more numerous the people, the greater should be the repressive force.
From this it follows that the relation of the magistrates to the
government should vary inversely to the relation of the subjects to the
Sovereign; that is to say, the larger the State, the more should the
government be tightened, so that the number of the rulers diminish in
proportion to the increase of that of the people.

It should be added that I am here speaking of the relative strength of
the government, and not of its rectitude: for, on the other hand, the
more numerous the magistracy, the nearer the corporate will comes to the
general will; while, under a single magistrate, the corporate will is,
as I said, merely a particular will. Thus, what may be gained on one
side is lost on the other, and the art of the legislator is to know how
to fix the point at which the force and the will of the government,
which are always in inverse proportion, meet in the relation that is
most to the advantage of the State.